Texas School Book Depository

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Dallas County Administration Building in 2005, formerly the Texas School Book Depository

The Texas School Book Depository (now the Dallas County Administration Building) is the former name of a seven-floor building facing Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas (U.S.). Located on the northwest corner of Elm and North Houston Streets, at the western end of downtown Dallas, its address is 411 Elm Street, Dallas, TX 75202-3317. It is most famous for its connection to the assassination of then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy. According to three United States government investigations,^[1] an employee in the building, Lee Harvey Oswald, fatally shot the president from a sixth floor window on the southeast corner.

[edit] History

The site of the building was originally owned by John Neely Bryan.^[2] During the 1880s, Maxime Guillot operated a wagon shop on the property. In 1894, the Rock Island Plow Company bought the land, and four years later constructed a five story building for the Southern Rock Island Plow Company.^[2] In 1901, the building was hit by lightning and nearly burned to the ground. It was rebuilt in 1903 in the Commercial Romanesque Revival Style, and expanded to seven stories. The land was bought in 1937 by Colonel D. Harold Byrd, who by 1963 had leased it to the Texas School Book Depository.^[2]

In 1963 the building was in use as a multi-floor warehouse for the storage of school textbooks and related materials and an order-fulfillment center by a private business of the same name. On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old former U.S. Marine who was working as a holiday-rush temporary employee at the building, fired rifle shots from the sixth floor of the Depository into the motorcade of President of the United States John F. Kennedy. The mortally wounded President was rushed to nearby Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The conclusion of law enforcement at the time, including the FBI, and later three government investigations over the span of 30 years, including the Presidentially-appointed Warren Commission, was that Oswald acted alone.

The Texas School Book Depository Company moved out in 1970 and the building was purchased in 1977 by the government of Dallas County. After renovating the lower five floors of the building for use as county government offices, the Dallas County Administration Building was dedicated on March 29, 1981. On President's Day 1989, the sixth floor opened to the public (for an admission charge) as the Sixth Floor Museum of assassination-related exhibits. On President's Day 2002, the seventh floor gallery opened.

Images of the Texas School Book Depository
As it appeared in 1969, when still used as the School Book Depository	Building plaque (the word "allegedly" has been underlined by vandalism)	Viewed from the west	The sixth floor window	Sixth Floor Museum logo